Can you get nothing out of nothing?

[Philosophy Explorer]

I'm on the fence with this one.

PhilX

[bahman]

Nothing comes out of nothing.

[Peter_out]

Shouldn't the question be: "can you get more out of less"? When we are discussing the emergence of anything & considering its source or origin or quantity or qualities there is an obvious & undeniable requirement for its source to be greater than itself. Anything else is goobly gook! Though negative + negative is normally cited as positive or neutral or a lesser negative where numbers are concerned this can't apply to the matter in the physical cosmos. It's something else altogether than it seems. I have discussed this at length elsewhere in this forum & am too old to re-type it plus I don't know how to do the highlighted quotes or I would quote myself here

[philosopher]

There exists no such thing as "nothingness". Empty space is a vacuum of... quantum fluctuations.

The universe simply popped into existence. It just so happened that our universe arose from quantum fluctuations that happened to be stable.

The odds of this happening are tiny, but given infinte quantum fluctuations, it will happen at some point.

Like if you throw the dice again and again, into all infinity, you will get your desired outcome at some point in the future.

Add to this, you could say that if you want to make a pile of earth, you dig a hole. Then you've got a hole and a pile of earth.

But summed up, it all adds up to... nothing.

[Erk]

I'm on the fence with this one.

PhilX

When Parmenides established the notion of nothing comes from nothing (ex nihilo nihil fit) he didn't mean the amount of nothing can change. His purpose was to state that it's impossible for something to come from nothing.

The universe simply popped into existence. It just so happened that our universe arose from quantum fluctuations that happened to be stable.

Which begs the question of course, where did the quantum fluctuations come from?

[philosopher]

I'm on the fence with this one.

PhilX

When Parmenides established the notion of nothing comes from nothing (ex nihilo nihil fit) he didn't mean the amount of nothing can change. His purpose was to state that it's impossible for something to come from nothing.

The universe simply popped into existence. It just so happened that our universe arose from quantum fluctuations that happened to be stable.

Which begs the question of course, where did the quantum fluctuations come from?

Why do they need to have a beginning?

You assume everything has a start/end, which is natural given we live with time.

But "before" big bang, there was no time. Every quantum fluctuation happened simultanously. Time was born with big bang creating space between events which we percieve as causal events. Time is not a thing per-see, it is a mathematical product of a mathematical function. For example, there is no such thing as Absolute Time. There are time(s) for every object in the universe.

In other words, it's an illusion and there is nothing before, nothing after. The universe is a block - a block universe, that just "is".
It never had a beginning and it will never have an end. It is simply a sequence of events of everything that has happened and everything that will happen, but every event exists in its own right. The past is as real as the future that is as real as the "now".

Regarding quantum fluctuations, it is every possible fluctuation, that does not "occur". It simply is, like waves/ripples in a frozen sea or waterfall.

You could say that at "before" big bang, time and space was opposite of each other - time was space, and space was time. Like if you go to an old fashioned cinema from the mid-19th century looking at behind the scenes and find the sequence of every image. Only when played the still frames produce the illusion of movement/change.

Btw. space and time becomes opposite of each other in the center of a black hole too according to the mathematics.

[Erk]

Why do they need to have a beginning?

You assume everything has a start/end, which is natural given we live with time.

Sorry for any confusion but I'm not meaning to make that assumption.

Why there is something rather than nothing doesn't necessarily imply a beginning. The 'something' can be eternal and I believe it is.